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U3 is the official unemployment for all unemployed people available to work who actively looked for a job in the last four weeks. A broader unemployment measure called U6 includes part-time, underemployed workers and people marginally attached to the labor force.

A broad measure of unemployment, which some observers say reflects the true number of people out of the workforce, fell by 1.9 points last year in Texas, far greater than the national average, according to data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Texas’ U6 unemployment rate, which includes unemployed people as well as underemployed workers and people marginally attached to the labor force, fell from 14 percent in 2011 to 12.1 percent in 2012. That compares with the national U6 rate of 14.7 percent last year, down from 15.9 percent.

Here is some other new BLS data for Texas in 2012:

– The number of workers employed part time for economic reasons in Texas fell to 549,500 from 610,500 in 2011. Those underemployed people worked part time because they couldn’t find a full-time job or of because of slack business conditions.

– The number of “discouraged workers” – people currently not looking for work because they don’t think any jobs are available for them – fell from 61,000 in 2011 to 53,000.

– Last year, more than 10 times as many people were underemployed than were discouraged.